Listed buildings in Whitegate and Marton
Whitegate and Marton is a civil parish in Cheshire West and Chester, England. It contains 33 buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as designated listed buildings. One of these, Vale Royal Abbey is listed at Grade II*, and the others are at Grade II. The parish is almost entirely rural, and most of the listed buildings are domestic or related to farming. The older houses and cottages are frequently wholly or partly timber-framed. The River Weaver and the Weaver Navigation run through the parish, and some of the listed structures are related to these waterways. Other listed buildings in the parish include ancient stones, monuments, structures related to Vale Royal Abbey, and St Mary's Church, Whitegate, its gatepiers, and its lychgate.
Image: Vale royal abbey
Image: Longstone
Image: Plague stone
Image: St Mary's Church, Whitegate 2
Vale Royal Abbey is a former medieval abbey and later country house in Whitegate, England. The precise location and boundaries of the abbey are difficult to determine in today's landscape. The original building was founded c. 1270 by the Lord Edward, later Edward I, for Cistercian monks. Edward had supposedly taken a vow during a rough sea crossing in the 1260s. Civil wars and political upheaval delayed the build until 1272, the year he inherited the throne. The original site at Darnhall was unsatisfactory, so was moved a few miles north to the Delamere Forest. Edward intended the structure to be on a grand scale—had it been completed it would have been the largest Cistercian monastery in the country—but his ambitions were frustrated by recurring financial difficulties.
Image: Nun's Grave, Vale Royal Abbey, Cheshire 04
Image: Nun's Grave, Vale Royal Abbey, Cheshire 07
The Round Tower Lodge is situated in the central reservation of the A556 road in Sandiway. All that survives of Vale Royal Abbey's gate lodge, the road was built around it in the 1930s. It is a Grade II listed building.
St Mary's Church, Whitegate, in 2009. The abbey's gate chapel served travellers, and has been a parish church since Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries.